Ch 9

  "Hahahaha! Die, you bastard! Die!”

  As the dust cloud from the twin buildings roared into the sky, burying the Stalker in a tomb of stone, a manic, hysterical laugh bubbled up from my chest. I laughed until my lungs burned, a wild, jagged sound that echoed through the silent market.

  "I am weaker than you," I whispered, my voice cracked and dry, "so I’ll just drop a goddamn street on your head.”

  I was intoxicated by the victory, by the sheer audacity of the plan. We had cheated death. We had crushed a commander of the Maw with nothing but gravity and desperation. For a few seconds, I felt like a god standing over a broken world.

  Then, the adrenaline vanished.

  "D-duck..." I hissed, my laughter turning into a strangled gasp of agony.

  The pain hit me like a physical hammer. My hands were screaming. I looked down at them; they were a mess of raw, weeping skin and tremors I couldn't control. Every nerve ending felt like it was being poked with a red-hot needle.

  I collapsed against a jagged piece of rebar, my body finally acknowledging the debt it had incurred. I had pushed Level 5 to 13 in a single day. My muscles felt like they were liquefying.

  "Amit!" Maya’s voice reached me through the ringing in my ears. She was there in an instant, her soot-stained face pale with worry as she saw me doubling over.

  "I'm... I'm okay," I lied, though my hands were shaking so violently I couldn't even close my fists. "We got him, Maya. The street... it worked.”

  Your hands!!. She screamed.

  I looked down at my right hand, and the sight was enough to make my stomach churn. It wasn't just burnt; it was ruined. My thumb and index finger—the ones I used to notch my arrows—were stripped of their nails. The skin had been incinerated so deeply that I could see the twitching nerves and white tendons of my palm. My entire shoulder was a raw, angry red.

  I tried to channel my Water Prana to soothe the agony, but nothing happened. The prana flickered and died. Panic flared in my chest. No... it can’t be. My body is so damaged that even my Prana can’t bridge the gap.

  I let out a rasping, bitter laugh that turned into a cough. "I’m an idiot," I hissed, my voice cracking. "How could I have been so stupid?" I had spent years reading web novels and LitRPG stories, knowing that a party is nothing without a Healer. Yet, in the heat of a real apocalypse, I had forgotten the most basic rule of survival. I was furious with myself. The anger was the only thing keeping the pain at bay.

  My mother... she had the potential to heal. But I immediately shut that thought down. I couldn't bring her into this slaughterhouse. If the Stalkers didn't kill her, the sight of these mangled corpses would.

  "The hospital," I muttered, looking toward the local clinic not far from the market. In this new system-driven world, doctors and nurses were the most likely to have chosen a Healer Class. I scanned the area; the survivors were beginning to crawl out from the wreckage. They knew the monster was dead, but the terror remained etched on their faces.

  "Go to the hospital!" I commanded my friends, my voice a jagged rasp. "Find a Healer. Bring them here. Tell them we saved their lives—the least they can do is save ours. Hurry!"

  Without a second's delay, Ajit bolted toward the clinic. As I waited, the market came alive with a haunting symphony of grief. Some people were sobbing over the charred remains of their loved ones; others were screaming in a manic joy of survival. But the sight that broke me was the children—small bodies crushed under the weight of the collapsed buildings. I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my heart, a guilt that no level-up could ever erase.

  Slowly, the survivors began to gather around us. A group of village elders and middle-aged men approached, their heads bowed in reverence.

  "Thank you, Amit... did you truly kill that nightmare?"

  The voice belonged to an elderly man who approached us, his body trembling with exhaustion and covered in jagged wounds. I could see the lingering terror of the Stalker etched deep into his eyes. I wasn't surprised that he knew my name; my father is a well-known government teacher in this area, and in a small village, everyone knows the teacher’s son.

  "Yes," I replied, my voice a hollow rasp. "It’s over."

  I looked away, unable to meet his gaze. All around the market ruins, the survivors were beginning to move like ghosts. Some were frantically clawing at piles of rubble, trying to unearth their trapped families, while others simply stared at the grey ash that used to be their loved ones. I felt a crushing weight of sadness in my chest, but as a Level 13 Warrior, I realized there was a wall between me and them—I had the power to kill the monster, but I had no power to undo the grief.

  As I scanned the wreckage, my eyes locked onto a face in the dirt. It was charred almost beyond recognition, but I knew those features. It was a friend from my school days. Our fathers were close, and we had spent our childhood playing together before his family moved away to the market side. Seeing him like this—as a piece of burnt debris—hit me harder than any physical blow from the Stalker. I stood frozen, torn between the triumph of the kill and the absolute mourning of the loss.

  The elderly man and a few middle-aged survivors followed my gaze. Their voices broke into soft, jagged sobs.

  "He was a brave boy," one of them whispered. "He fought until his very last breath. He, his brother, and fifteen or sixteen other boys... they stood their ground when the first wave of small hounds arrived. They managed to kill several of them, but they didn't know the beasts exploded upon death. Many were lost in those first bursts of white light. The rest of us tried to join in, tried to save whoever we could..."

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  He stopped, his tears leaving tracks in the soot on his face. "But when the big one came—that Commander—everything ended. We couldn't even scratch its hide. It slaughtered them one by one, slowly... purposefully."

  He broke down then, weeping openly for the fallen youth of our village.

  Hearing their broken voices, a lump formed in my throat and unwanted tears began to blur my vision. I didn't want to think about the horror anymore. I knew from the novels I had read that invasions meant mass casualties, but experiencing the raw, visceral reality of it was a thousand times more agonizing than any fiction. Beside me, I could hear Maya’s jagged sobs; she was completely overwhelmed by the tragedy surrounding us.

  Suddenly, I heard Ajit calling out to me. I looked up to see him approaching with a young woman and a middle-aged man following close behind. They were coming from the direction of the district hospital. As the girl got closer, I noticed her pale complexion and familiar features. My memory sparked—she was Fatima, a girl who had studied in my school. Her father was a well-known doctor in the area.

  "Amit? Is that really you?" Fatima asked, her voice trembling as she and Ajeet reached us. I simply nodded, unable to find my voice. "Ya Allah... how did you end up in such a horrific state?" She didn't seem surprised by the destruction; Ajit must have briefed her on the way about how we had taken down the Stalker.

  "It's nothing... just the price of the hunt," I managed to rasp out, every word a struggle. "It’s good to see you again, Fatima."

  "Don't say another word," she commanded, her medical instincts overriding her fear. "Your condition is critical. Stay still and let me heal you. I've chosen the Healer profession."

  She knelt beside me and gently took my mangled hands in hers. The moment she touched me, I felt a foreign Prana—cool and soothing—seeping into my skin. A soft, emerald light began to radiate from her palms, flowing directly into my open wounds. As her Prana entered my system, I felt a strange sensation of alternating heat and cold, as if the energy was manually re-stitching my cells and repairing my damaged nerves.

  The relief was so sudden and intense that an involuntary groan of satisfaction escaped my lips. I quickly clamped my mouth shut, my face flushing with embarrassment. 'What am I doing? That was almost humiliating,' I scolded myself inwardly, trying to maintain my composure despite the incredible sensation of my body finally being put back together.

  "Did you really kill those monsters?" Fatima asked, her voice barely a whisper. I gave a slight nod, and she fell silent, focusing all her energy on the healing process.

  I felt her Prana seeping into my hands, slowly traveling up my arms to my shoulders, and then spreading throughout my entire body. It was a strange, tingling sensation, almost like a thousand tiny needles of cool water stitching me back together. After a while, Fatima pulled her hands away, her breathing slightly heavy.

  "My Prana of Petals is exhausted," she said, wiping sweat from her brow. "But don't worry. I’ve just gained two levels simply by healing your massive injuries. The level-up will help me recover quickly so I can continue. In the meantime, my father will take over. He has also chosen the Healer profession."

  Hearing this, I immediately shook my head. "No, Fatima. Tell your father to focus on my friends and the other villagers first. I can hold on; I’m stable for now. There are so many people here with life-threatening wounds who won't survive without immediate help. Prioritize them.”

  ….

  After the battle, the real struggle began—the fight for the living. We spent hours hauling heavy debris and pulling survivors from the wreckage. Fatima, followed by a small exhausted team of doctors and nurses from the hospital, moved through the ruins like angels of mercy, their hands glowing with the soft light of healing Prana.

  For those we couldn't save, we did the only thing we could. We gathered the fallen together, performing a mass cremation. As the smoke rose into the indigo-stained sky, we offered them a final, silent farewell. The market, once the heart of our community, was now a graveyard.

  ……..

  My mind kept racing. How do I ask Fatima to join us? I knew our party was incomplete without her, but I didn't know how to approach her amidst all this grief.

  I thought about it for a moment and then walked over to Fatima. "Fatima, will you join our group?" I asked. "We are lacking a healer, and having you with us would make us complete."

  After considering it for a short while, Fatima gave me her answer. "Alright," she said. "I like this work anyway.”

  Great, I said. After this, I began to survey the survivors. Only about fifteen to twenty warriors remained fit for combat in the market district. The rest of the population had been decimated.

  Many children and the elderly had perished simply from the ambient heat of the Stalker; their bodies weren't conditioned, and they lacked the 'Training Session' system buffs to withstand such extreme temperatures. For them, time had simply run out.

  I counted about sixty to seventy survivors in total. I knew I had to lead them back to the village. Among them, I identified a few with specialized professions—some had chosen [Builder] and [Carpenter] classes. Their skills would be vital for constructing fortified shelters using the iron-leaf trees.

  To my surprise, I also found a couple of [Tailors] and, more importantly, two survivors who had chosen the [Blacksmith] profession.

  I discussed the plan with my friends, the village elders, and the survivors at the market. They nodded in solemn agreement; they truly had no other choice. Most of the remaining warriors were weak—the kind who had prioritised hiding and fleeing the moment the invasion began. They needed leadership and a safe haven.

  During our preparations, I discovered some fascinating details about the new Profession system. Those with the [Builder] class could actually manipulate the structure of their Astras to construct more durable buildings, while those with the [Woodcutter] class could fell the reinforced iron-leaf trees with their axes at a speed that defied logic. It was as if the System had perfectly tuned their physical capabilities for their specific roles.

  After another half hour of gathering supplies and survivors, we began the trek back to our village. My heart ached thinking about my parents; I knew they must be terrified, wondering if I was still alive.

  Since the distance was only about 200 meters, we reached the outskirts quickly. The road beneath us was a web of deep cracks and upheavals, a testament to the planet’s violent transformation. As our small village came into view, with its open fields and scattered homes, I glanced toward the Rift. I let out a sigh of relief—no new invaders were emerging, and I knew the System would have sent a loud notification if the second wave had officially begun.

  As we marched in, I saw villagers peeking out from their homes. They looked shocked to see such a large group following us. I recognized some of the faces—men who had fled the moment they saw the Stalker. I didn't say anything; I knew I couldn't control people's fear.

  Some children started laughing as we passed. I realized then how ridiculous we looked—covered in soot, dried blood, and draped in those massive "Iron-Leaves." We looked like primitive wildmen. It made me worry about our equipment. If the first rift destroyed our clothes like this, what will happen in the next one? Will we have to fight naked?

  I turned to one of the survivors who had chosen the [Tailor] profession and asked if they could craft something durable.

  "I have the skills to make reinforced clothing," he replied, eyeing our tattered gear, "but I need strong materials."

  I scanned the landscape. The fields were now overgrown with strange, meter-high grasses that looked as tough as wire, and the surrounding plants had evolved into thick, fibrous giants. I pointed toward them and asked if they would suffice. He examined the stalks and nodded—with the right processing, we finally had the raw materials for a new kind of cloths.

  "They look thick and rigid, but I have a skill that can refine them into something soft and as durable as high-grade cloth," one of the tailors announced confidently. His words brought a wave of relief to the group.

  We addressed the entire village, explaining the grim reality of the situation. I looked them in the eyes and made it clear: "If we don't kill them, they will kill us. To survive, we must fight." My friends and I briefed everyone on the upcoming tasks.

  We were exhausted—the deep muscle fatigue from the battle hadn't faded—but there was no time to rest. I ordered the crafting of reinforced clothing and the gathering of lumber from the iron-leaf groves to build fortified shelters. They listened and obeyed. They knew that without our protection, they wouldn't have lasted another hour.

  I could see my house in the distance, standing like a lonely beacon.